Join us for a visit with some of our favorite authors whose books we love to read and share with everyone. You'll get to hear from authors who've become friends over the years, authors we're just discovering, and lots of prizes and books to win!

Pages

Sunday, April 15, 2012

I have been a fan of Elizabeth Petersand her Amelia Peabody stories ever since the
first one came out back in the late 1970s. I discovered her because one of the
librarians at my local library wrote to various authors asking recommendations.
Phyliss Whitney wrote back suggesting both Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth
Peters. In blue ink, the librarian scrawled I wonder if she knows that they are
the same person. As I already liked Barbara Michaels, I figured to give
Elizabeth Peters a go and was not disappointed.

Through out the intervening years, I sometimes wondered
where Elizabeth Peters had the kernel of her story from, but then a couple of
weeks ago, the BBC showed a documentary on Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie
aka Flinders Petrie,the man who founded Modern Egyptology and
indeed modern archaeology and I knew I had found at least one of her inspirations.
In her other life, Peters is the
Egyptologist Barbara Mertz and indeed her first published book was not a romance, mystery or
gothic but a book on The Daily Life in
Ancient Egypt.

Petrie was wonderfully eccentric. Despite having no formal
education, he was the first man to accurately measure the pyramids. Born in
1853, he first became interested in Egypt after reading a book on the Great
Pyramid. In 1880 he first went to Egypt to survey the pyramids. Because it was
hot and to keep the curious away, he wore his faded red long underwear.
Apparently it looked like he was naked — dreadfully shocking to the Victorians
who flocked to Egypt’s many monuments. His research still provides most of the
basic data for pyramid study today.

When he returned to England, he came under the patronage of
Amelia Peters, a novelist, journalist
and patron of The Egypt Exploration Fund now known as the Egypt Exploration
Society. After her death in 1892, he became a professor at the University College
of London as she had endowed a chair of Egyptology. He developed the systematic approach to archaeology
and applied stratification or seriation to the subject. Stratification was
pioneered by William “Strata” Smith who
noticed layers of sedimentary rock followed the same pattern. Petrie reasoned
rightly that objects found in the same layer belonged to the same time period,
and if you can date the pottery shards, you can date the entire layer. He was
also the first person to really apply the notion of context to an archaeological
dig — everything was important,
including where and how the object was found. One of his most famous pupils was
Howard Carter who found King Tut. Excavating in both Egypt and Palestine, he is
responsible for more major discoveries than practically any archaeologist.
Unfortunately he was also a believer in eugenics and it is this distasteful part
of his personality which means that he remains a hugely controversial figure.
He married a former UCL pupil in 1896.

But I was tremendously fascinated to learn about Amelia
Peters and Flinders Petrie because of Elizabeth Peters’ books and the echoes
with her characters. I find it truly interesting the various bits of inspirations
other authors might have. If you have
not read any of the Amelia Peabody books and are interested in intelligent and
strong late Victorian heroines, I really recommend them.They do withstand the test of time.

Michelle Styles writes warm, witty, and intimate historical
romance for Harlequin Historical. Her next novel His Unsuitable Viscountess
will be published in August 2012. One of her inspirations for her heroine
Eleanor wasthe great Regency
businesswoman Eleanor Coade. You can read more about Michelle’s books on www.michellestyles.co.uk

It is good that other people like Amelia Peabody!I have read Victoria Bliss. One of the Victoria Bliss's is set in Rome and the first time I went to Rome, I had to find the church with the skulls. Unfortunately it was closed, but it was on my to do list because of that book.